What Michelle did next
She’s been relishing life out of the public eye but, finds Jane Mulkerrins, with her memoir out this week and an arena tour, the former First Lady is back with a bang
The last time most of the British public caught sight of Michelle Obama was in January 2017, when she was graciously – if a little awkwardly – accepting a Tiffany gift box from the incoming First Lady, Melania Trump (a move very much against protocol, hence the awkwardness), shortly before husband Donald was sworn in as President.
But while the new residents of the White House have barely allowed a day to go by since without generating front-page headlines, the former First Lady has slipped quietly from public view.
This distinctly low profile over the past two years has been entirely deliberate, according to insiders. ‘She was counting down the days until she could leave the White House and have a more normal life,’ says Kate Andersen Brower, author of First Women: The Grace And Power Of America’s Modern First Ladies. ‘Most First Ladies feel claustrophobic in the White House – she jokingly called it “a really nice prison”. Of course, she has Secret Service protection and gets recognised everywhere, but she at least has more freedom than she used to.’
This month, however, that low profile comes to a dramatic end with publication of her much-anticipated memoir, Becoming, detailing her extraordinary journey from her childhood on Chicago’s tough South Side to become the first African American First Lady. In it she reveals that she used IVF to conceive their children, Malia and Sasha, following a traumatic miscarriage – ‘I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were because we don’t talk about them’; and that she and Barack have undergone couples’ therapy: ‘ We get help with our marriage when we need it.’ Michelle also details how she felt during the early stages of their relationship: ‘As soon as I allowed myself to feel anything for Barack,’ she writes, ‘the feelings came rushing – a toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfilment, wonder.’
The book tour will be a far cry from sedate signings in bookshops; instead, in the same rock-star style with which the Obamas imbued Barack’s presidency, Michelle is, this week, embarking on a 10-city US stadium tour in arenas seating up to 23,000 fans. The tour will also feature superstar moderators, including Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Oprah Winfrey. Tickets have generated ‘Beyoncé-level sales’, according to the Washington Post, despite costing up to $3,000 for a front row VIP package, which includes a meet-and-greet with Michelle (10% of all ticket sales will go to charities, schools and community groups in each city). A London date has been added too: Michelle will appear at the South Bank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, with novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, on 3 December.
A sell-out US stadium tour is unusual for any author, but unprecedented for a former First Lady. ‘Michelle Obama is able to relate to millions of people in a way that other First Ladies have not been able to, in part because she comes from a working-class family, graduated from public [state] schools and went on to graduate from Princeton
and Harvard. She’s the embodiment of the American dream,’ says Andersen Brower. ‘People are also nostalgic about the Obama years and they want to hear from her because she represents a different era from the divided period we’re in now.’
But, along with writing her soon-tobe-best-selling memoir – part of a joint publishing deal with Barack, reportedly worth at least £50m – what has Michelle been up to these past couple of years?
Unlike most former First Families, who tend to leave the capital as fast as possible, the Obamas have stayed in Washington DC, in part because youngest daughter Sasha, 17, has yet to finish her education at prestigious private school Sidwell Friends (Malia, 20, is at Harvard). The Obamas live in a £6.3m house in Kalorama, an upmarket area, where they count Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump among their neighbours. She’s taking joy in ‘the small things… Now I have a door and a doorbell and people actually trip out when I come to my door and I open it,’ Michelle said earlier this year. ‘And the dogs, Bo and Sunny, don’t know what a doorbell is, so [ it] rings and they’re like, “I’ve never heard that before.”’
The Obamas are now regulars at some of DC’S most fashionable restaurants, such as the Michelin-starred Italian, Masseria, and Mirabelle, a new French hotspot. While Barack has reportedly been working on his golf game with his close friend – and former VP – Joe Biden, Michelle has been a regular at Soulcycle (along with her Secret Service agent, who also takes the class), as well as at Solidcore, an intense 50-minute class based on Pilates.
There’s been plenty of R&R too – ‘I wake up when I want to wake up,’ she says – and no shortage of glamorous travel. The couple kicked off their new-found freedom with an extended holiday with Richard Branson on Necker Island and have also visited George and Amal Clooney at their home in the UK. And they sailed around French Polynesia on a yacht with their A-list friends Oprah, Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen.
But the woman who so industriously championed health, fitness and education has not simply been whooping it up. She has an office in Washington, painted the same salmon pink as her old East Wing office in the White House, to which she takes her own packed lunch every day and from where, last month, she launched the Global Girls Alliance, an organisation to empower girls through education. It will support 1,500 girls’ education groups around the world with funding, training and networking opportunities. ‘ When you educate a girl, you educate a family, a community, a country,’ she says of the initiative. She also launched a voterregistration campaign called When We All Vote to encourage voting in last week’s midterms and beyond.
Becoming is not the only creative project Michelle has been working on. She and Barack have signed a multi-year deal with Netflix to produce a variety of content, which the online streaming service says could include scripted series, feature films and documentaries. For Michelle, the appeal lies in the ‘power of storytelling to inspire us, to make us think differently about the world around us, and help us open our minds and hearts to others’.
So, might we expect to see the Obamas gracing the red carpet at the Oscars? It’s certainly possible. One of their first projects, somewhat aptly, looks set to be an adaptation of Michael Lewis’s latest book, The Fifth Risk, an exploration of the chaos and incompetence of the Trump administration. Lewis, whose book they recently secured the rights for, also wrote The Big Short, the film of which won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
One place we can be certain not to see Michelle is back in the White House. ‘Absolutely not,’ she says of running for President. ‘ You have to want the job. I’ve never had the passion for politics. I just happened to be married to somebody who has the passion for politics, and he dragged me kicking and screaming into this arena.’
That particular arena might have been her husband’s but, this winter, the arenas are packed out just for her. Welcome back, Michelle Obama – we’ve missed you.